HSD: Integrated Analysis of Robustness in Dynamic Social Ecological Systems

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Many societies have endured for long periods, successfully coping with uncertainty, disturbance, and change in the environment. Many other societies have failed in this regard. The core question addressed in this interdisciplinary research project is why some social-ecological systems are more successful in dealing with disturbances and change in the environment than others. The investigators, who come from a broad range of composed of social, physical, and engineering science fields, hypothesize that an important factor bearing on this question is a well-known phenomenon in engineering: a system cannot be robust to all classes of disturbances. Thus, in developing mechanisms to address an existing suite of uncertainties and environmental risks (becoming robust to a particular class of disturbances), society necessarily becomes vulnerable to other classes of disturbances. Through the application of several complementary quantitative techniques to a suite of mathematical models based on a large set of case studies, the research team will explore such robustness-fragility trade-offs in a range of simple irrigation societies. The research team will employ methods and insights from applied mathematics, electrical engineering (control), resource economics, archaeology, and ecology to develop an integrated approach to study how societies deal with uncertainty, disturbance, and change. The products from the project will be (1) an empirical database and a suite of formal mathematical models relating to the basic biophysical, social, and institutional characteristics of several irrigation societies, (2) a deeper understanding of how societies may become fragile as they attempt to cope with uncertainty and change in the environment, and (3) new tools for resource managers: a set of design principles for robust institutions that perform well in the face of both social and environmental disturbances.This project will yield fundamental new knowledge concerning the interaction between human social dynamics and environmental change. It also will improve resource management practice and to enhance mathematical education. By bringing together techniques from a range of disciplines, the investigators will develop new tools for the study of social-ecological systems that are able to cope with more complexity than traditional approaches. The research results have the potential to improve resource management practices by providing tools to help predict when alternative responses to disturbance and environmental change will succeed and how they will most likely fail. Research findings will be translated into practice through the efforts of the Resilience Alliance, an international organization that produces research, educational materials, and practical tools for resource managers. The research project will contribute to ongoing activities at Arizona State University designed to enhance mathematical literacy in the life and social sciences by engaging both graduate and undergraduate students in a problem-focused, interdisciplinary research program involving mathematics, economics, engineering, ecology, and archeology. An award resulting from the FY 2005 NSF-wide competition on Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) supports this project. All NSF directorates and offices are involved in the coordinated management of the HSD competition and the portfolio of HSD awards.